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AIXpert Blog

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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

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I have a few customers and IBMers tell me their Shared Storage Pool (SSP) failed to come up after some major disaster like Total network outage Total SAN outage Total site unexpected electrical power outage They then fiddle about and eventually, like hours or even days later, send me email. All I can say is I am sorry to hear about their issue, that I don't have that problems and I have had my share of electricity cuts (ironically while testing the uninterruptible power supply!). But I can offer some advice . . . The... [More]

It seems that not many nmon users know that nmon for AIX will detect and show on-screen or save to the nmon file many AIX events. That is the problem about being the nmon designer and developer for so many years - it is called expert blindness. It is totally obvious to me until a respected nmon user asks a question to which my initial reaction is how can you not know the answer to that ! It can detect these among a number of other events and record them: Live partition Mobility (LPM) where you move a running Logical Partition... [More]

This Topic was covered in a Power Systems Virtual User Group webinar on 21st June 2017 you can catch the replay here: Power Systems VUG website Please watch the video and/or look at the slides for a 1 hour basics and 45 minutes programming details What do we want ? Energy Per POWER server a simple Comma Separated Value (CSV) file
Electrical consumption in Watts - single number Temperature in Celsius for the machine inlet + system planar + CPUs One line for each capture point Same data but nicely graphed (web... [More]

Due to IBM marketing deciding to have four machines with the same Hollywood name = S822LC - every one has given up on them. This blog is about the POWER8 Minsky machine. This is developed and manufactured by Wistron for IBM under the OpenPOWER program and sold as the IBM S822LC for High Performance Computing (HPC) . Unlike some of the other S822LC model the name is actually correct. This computer only makes sense to me if you have a configuration with the very high performance maths computation NVIDIA GPUs. It also has higher... [More]

With my new fangled REST API Python scripts I collect stats every 5 minutes for each machine electrical power Watts and Temperature plus Shared Storage Pool disk I/O. Then I noted the the HMC " Manage Users and Tasks " shows 3000+ HMC sessions and growing a few every five minutes. I add 5 and 5 and get " oops " so the REST API calls are creating sessions that are not closed or timing out. Eventually your HMC will refuse further REST API calls - mine certainly did and it requires a reboot at that point. You can't try... [More]

I am writing this blog because I tried to do this, got confused by the documentation and completely failed at first! However, I persisted and finally got it working and want to save you the frustration and wasted time. I assume you have a regular POWER8 Power Server running PowerVM and dual VIOS. Mine is a S824 with latest in March 2017 firmware (860) and HMC (860) but the problems don't related to these levels. In true "cookbook" style follow me as I get it working: 1)... [More]

Note: this Python script creates HMC Sessions but does not log off so they build up over times - The solution to that is covers in a new AIXpertBlog here: Avoiding HMC REST API Session Logoff Issues The main AIXpert Blog that explained everything but the code can be found here: AIXpert Blog: Shared Storage Pool I/O Graphs via the HMC REST API Detailed Walk through of PCM_SSP.py version 23 Note: In is example code, simplicity is more important than... [More]

This has been replace by better python programs you can find POWER8 Watts Temp SSP I/O from HMC REST API Version 2 Download of the code files is available :-) Python code walk through completed here AIXpert Blog: SSP I/O Graphs via the HMC REST API Python code walkthrough The HMC can support loads of statistics about the servers it controls at both the server level and the Virtual Machine level. This function has been available... [More]

This blog has been replaced by another blog here: POWER8 Watts Temp SSP I/O from HMC REST API Version 2 Stop PRESS: I have just been told the Energy stats do not work on the POWER8 E870 or E880 as they don't include the hardware to collect measurements Unfortunately, it is not documented in the IBM KnowledgeCenter Supported are POWER8 S8xx, S8xxL and E850, when connected to a HMC Note: this Python script creates HMC Sessions but does not log off so they build up over time &... [More]

Time to review your AIX and VIOS levels? It is part of my job to work with customers that have hit performance problems or gone critical after a "small" configuration change ("What could possibly go wrong? - Oh nuts!"). Time and time again my first reaction is: "That AIX, VIOS and Firmware version is so old ! What where you thinking? " Avoid running in Production on your vital Servers software with issues, security holes and bugs that someone hit 2 + years ago, raised a PMR, IBM... [More]

AIX 7 SSD/Flash Cache Best Practice I have been asked for this a couple of times and the answers that spring to mind are Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, you are serious! Consultant standard answer number 1: "It depends" Hmmm! Tricky! I guess the problem is: The questioner is really wanting a prediction of what will happen and is it going to be cost efficient. And these questions have no answer . If you look the topic up on Google you will get hits of the Official Announcement and a few cut'npastes of them, which amounts to a... [More]

This is really a reminder to myself because I hate searching for this list on my laptop but please comment on anything you see that as missing. Here is my list of things to check or do to make a nice clean image Date, time correct Timezone correct IP address & full hostname OK Check the content of /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf are as expected Remove junk files from /tmp etc. & old / large logs Also check / and /home for unwanted files AIX “errclean 0” to remove old error log that don't apply to the new deploy AIX... [More]

The VIOS Install Instructions and Readme files can be found here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=hpc1vios_home The new on 11th Nov 2016 VIOS release 2.2.5 with the first service pack is VIOS 2.2.5.10. The VIOS 2.2.5 Readme includes the Installation instructions can be found here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=hpc1vios-40ce3a66 In this we find the usual limits but also a few rules for this and the increased number of VIOS nodes. Please read the "Readme" in full. Here I will highlight the important... [More]

UPDATE: The Official IBM VIOS 2.2.5 Shared Storage Pools (Phase 6) New Features Announcement arrives three weeks after GA but better late than never, right! You can find it at this URL: VIOS Shared Storage Pools (Phase 6) Announcement = the Official Version My Summary of the Important Features Available with VIOS 2.2.5 – Generally Available 11 th Nov 2016 1. SSP VIOS nodes from 16 to 24 – a normally 12 dual VIOS servers 2. Fully support the DeveloperWorks SSP Disaster... [More]